A Commonplace Book

The so-called "fog of war" is one of the most pervasive and natural metaphors in the English language. War is inherently volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. For this condition, contemporary US military usage offers the acronym VUCA, to which anyone would prefer the terse elegance of fog. For 19th-century writers, fog of war has the added merit of evoking the opacity of the black powder battlefield. It is not surprising that the phrase is popular and widely used. Like most military concepts, "fog of war" is normally attributed to Clausewitz [On War], who receives credit for the alliterative "fog and friction"--friction referring to physical impediments to military action, fog to the commander's lack of clear information. The only problem with this neat formula is that Clausewitz neither uses fog of war nor gives fog significant weight in his argument.